Sunday, 7 May 2017

the girl in the yellow dress - part 13

It was a few days after Sebastian took the box to the
charity shop that he began to think he’d got things in order in his life again.

He’d found a cheaper room to rent in a shared house, it was
not ideal but close enough to work that he could walk so he would put up with it
until things improved with the business or he found a new rich meal ticket.

It honestly hadn’t started out like that, but Sebastian had
developed expensive tastes at university when suddenly he was mixing with a
very different set of friends. Friends with money. He begged and borrowed where
necessary but drew the line at stealing. Although he was adept at lying and
rarely got caught out until now.

Celia was a friend of a friend who lived a jet set
lifestyle, her only work being spending daddy’s money. Sebastian charmed his
way into her heart. He knew the right people and shamelessly dropped names into
conversations to impress her, some of them he’d even met, however briefly.

As the months passed, he suggested they move in together.
She was reticent at first but by a strange quirk of fate there was a massive
fire at a block of executive flats nearby and as he had always been cagey about
his address he told her his flat was one of the ones destroyed along with most
of his possessions which explained a lack of stuff to move in. How could she
refuse him now?

He wasn’t really using her, there were feelings there. Sunday
lunches with her family were a particular highlight for him, drinking Arthur’s
port and talking politics, complimenting Monica on her latest art acquisition
and teasing little Penny while also tutoring her for free. “ It’s my pleasure
Monica.” He would simper, knowing he was becoming an important much loved and
needed part of the family.

He’d always craved
more relations; his family was sparse consisting of just him and his mum.

Things were going so well and he was all ready to propose
but then Celia found some of the skeletons he’d been carefully hiding and she
brandished him a gold digger who had never truly cared for her. She never gave him chance to explain.

To give her credit she never divulged his secrets, there was
no public shaming, irreconcilable
differences being her reason for the split and most of their crowd believed she
was being her usual flighty self. There had been a string of boyfriends in her
past so it was nothing new.

So now he was single but not homeless, he just about had a
job providing they could make a success of Summer Brooke wine.

The only fly in the ointment he could see was that he had a
ball to go to and no date to accompany him. He was pondering this fact and
hatching a plan when he walked into the coffee shop…